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Thursday, 18 February 2016

Do the hard thing

My Birthday definitely didn´t end with emails last week, in fact it got about 10x better after I had already said it was amazing, because that night we went to Goggy´s house, and we finally, finally got to talk with her again!! She has a crazy work schedule and is often in Lisboa like I already mentions, so it has been hard to catch her in the house. But we caught her and she is definitely back in the game!!! Ahhh!! We had an awesome lesson with her, and we were able to explain a lot of the questions she had about the plan of salvation, and she seemed to like and agree with everything we agreed with. But even more amazing than our lesson, was that she told us she had been talking to her son in Canada about us.

Her son had been attending a church there in Canada for the past while, and she never knew exactly what church is was, but said that the whole family had noticed that because of this church he had completely changed. She said he was heading for a bit of a dangerous path, but everyone in the family attributes his changes to "this church". He used to drink, didn´t have much sense of responsibility, etc. but now he is a completely different person.

Well, as Goggy was explaining to her son that she had met 2 missionaries that she had been talking to, he said the following: "HOLY ______ MOM!!! That´s my church!!!"

(I´ll let you fill in the blanks)

CAN YOU BELIEVE IT!!!!!

I just about fell on the floor.

So basically that was the best birthday present I have ever received! haha

She invited us over to her house of Friday to have dinner for her birthday, but unfortunately she got pneumonia and actually ended up in the hospital in Lisbon, so if you could all pray for Goggy, that would be incredible!

After our lesson with Goggy we went over to President Luis´s house and they made a birthday dinner for me and had cake and the whole works!

And guess what the birthday dinner was.

SUSHI.

Yup, I am spoiled.

They are incredible!

The birthday celebrations just continued on Tuesday because we got to go to Lisbon and hear from Elder Dyches!!!

The conference was split up into 2 days, so only 3 zones were there, but it was nice because it made it a little bit more personal! elder Dyches was absolutely incredible, and so was his wife.

They talked a lot about "doing the hard thing". That was their motive while he was mission president in Orgeon. I thought it was super interesting to hear all his tips for us not only as missionaries, but also as future members of the church.

One thing that he talked about was not being distracted just because we might not being used to our full capacity in the church. He said that we need to continually be engaged despite our callings. That we need to ACT and not be acted upon, and look for the ways that we can magnify whatever calling we may be in.

Which reminds me.

We recently got a book in our mission called the power of Member Missionaries. I am going to encourage ALL of you to go get that book and start reading it right now. I definitely think that every member should read that book. (Dad, you being bishop should really read that book)

Ok, one last quote that I really enjoyed de Elder Dyches:

"Successful men and women are always associated with ACTION"

That´s the key folks, so go out and ACT.

The rest of our week was also super solid.

We ended up working a lot with part member families.

One of our members has gone a little less active lately, and currently has a boyfriend who isn´t a member of the church, so we finally got into her house and were able to teach both her and him the message of the restoration. I was a little nervous that he would be against the church, but we ended up having a super good conversation with them, and he is incredibly nice. They still didn´t come to church this week was a little bit of a bummer, but we are going to continue to work with them! Maybe prepare them to get married and sealed in the temple?!

We also have another member named Nicolae. He is from Maldavia actually and his wife is from the Ukraine. Nicolae has an incredible conversion story and actually attended church every sunday for 3 years before being baptized because his wife wouldn´t marry him. Well, anyways, I have been trying for the past 2 transfers to try and get into their house, because she is not a member, and she should be. She doesn´t come to church, but she does come to our activities in the church-like the cultural night last week. Anyways, she is super nice, and yesterday we just stopped by without warning, and they let us in and gave us supper and we were also able to have a super good conversation with her! For our cultural night they brought another couple who weren´t members and at the end of our conversation last night she said that that couple really enjoyed our activity and said that they were most impressed by us missionaries. So I am completely stoked about that, and hope that in the near future we can get into their house and start teaching them!

As for the other news of the week!

Sister Andrew and I got Transfer calls last night, and it looks like we are going to be staying together in Montijo for another Transfer!!!! WOOOOO! I was super stoked about that! What I wasn´t expecting was the fact that I would be called as the new Sister Training Leader for our area......WHAT?! The sister training leader area has always been in Barreiro, so I definitely wasn´t expecting that! I have absolutely no idea what I am doing! In the past all the sisters have had senior companions to train them with this kind of stuff, but it´s literally just me and the Lord in this one. So pray for me, because I am going to need it. One more fun fact: SIster Tilton is in my disctrict.....BEST DAY EVER!

Love you fam!! Thanks for everything! I hope you have an incredible week!!! Não Esqueçam de orar para mim!!!

Paz e Bênçãos

-Sister Selk

Our trip to the aquarium last week

Check out this beast!

Some pictures from our cultural night. Just look at swaggin Alfredo!

Some of the spread of food (Notice the poutine that I made....yup I was pretty proud! It went fast!)